Page 50 - She's One Crazy Lady!

It was a ha“
One day she set us the title: ‘The Face at the Window”. I was stumped, but whilst chatting with Mum about it, probably while we were washing up, or in the shop, she suggested lots of ideas and one of them stuck in my mind. My imagination had been fired and I wrote like I’d never written before; the words just flowed. Why? Because what I was writing about was ‘real’. Each morning, on my way to catch the bus to school I used to wave to a neighbour, an elderly man who always waved back and smiled. He became my main character – my Face at the Window – but it had a sad ending because one morning he wasn’t there; Mum told me he had died. (This was the case). I felt it was a really good story and felt so pleased and proud I had written it and was so excited to hand in my homework – then devastated when it was returned with a big fat ‘0’ written at the bottom of the page and the dreaded words: “See Me” written in red ink. Mrs Chamberlain would not believe I had written it and would not accept that Mum had only made suggestions. It was a hard lesson for me, and I felt utterly cheated and hurt that I wasn’t believed. Rather than dwell on it I chose to persevere with further assignments to prove to Mrs Chamberlain, and to me, that I could write, and I put a lot more effort into my story writing. Writing that story had inspired me and my confidence, (despite the knockback), had risen. I was never brilliant, but my grades gradually improved – and I enjoyed it. Mum still offered suggestions, as I did to my pupils when I was a teacher.
What also inspired me to write was when we studied ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’, the well-known story of a German born Jewish girl who, at the age of 13, together with members of her family and neighbours, went into hiding in ‘The Secret Annexe” in Amsterdam for over two years during the German occupation of the Netherlands at the time
of the Second World War. Her family and their guests, who hid with them, were eventually betrayed and discovered. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen, a German concentration camp in 1944; only her father, Otto, survived. At the beginning of their isolation her father gave her a diary which enabled Anne to write her thoughts, thoughts that were so mature for her years; thoughts and feelings that no teenage girl or boy, should ever have to contemplate feeling and experiencing.
She wrote: “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”
rd lesson for me, and I felt utterly cheated and hurt that I wasn’t
believ”
ed.
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